Detained artist to create London landmark

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Ai Weiwei: design will be based around a water-hole for catching rainwaterDavid Gray/Reuters

Ben HoyleArts Correspondent

Published at 12:01AM, February 8 2012

Ai Weiwei, the artist whose 81-day detention by the Chinese government last year prompted a Times campaign to free him, is to design a temporary landmark for London this summer.

Along with the Swiss architects Herzog & de Meuron, with whom he designed the Beijing national stadium, nicknamed the “Bird’s Nest”, for the 2008 Olympic Games, he has been commissioned to create this year’s Serpentine Gallery pavilion.

Every year the Hyde Park gallery invites a leading global architect to devise a pavilion for its programme of summer events.